Matt:Â â€œWe did Rock In Rio and had Judas Priest opening. The tour manager came backstage and asked if we could move our riser for Judas Priest. I said, â€˜yeah, sure put your riser out there.â€™ I go out there and Judas Priest are doing â€˜Turbo Loverâ€™ and the next thing I know the drum riserâ€™s going 50ft up in the air with smoke coming out of it! I thought, â€˜Oh boy, how am I gonna follow that?!â€™ The first solo I did was at Rock In Rio in front of 145,000 people and I didnâ€™t even know about it until on the way to the gig. Axl said he needed to take a break in the middle of the show for his voice and I should do a solo. Iâ€™d just joined the band, it was my first show, Iâ€™m not going to say no! So I was like, â€˜Okay, f**k! Iâ€™m going to do a solo.â€™ Now Iâ€™d probably be like, â€˜F**k, I donâ€™t know man, let me work on that a bit!â€™â€

Marc Canter (2012):Â “When he was their tour manger he was the one keeping things cool. When he became their manger things were ok for a while and then he became a Yes Man to Axl. Maybe because he thought he would get fired? Catering to one members needs while he should have had also been looking out for the other guys too. I don’t think Doug knew what he became until years after he was not working with the band. I talked to him a few years ago and he told me to tell Slash that he was sorry for the things that went down. I guess he felt that he didn’t represent them evenly But as a tour manger, there was no one like him. He took care of shit that no one would think of doing and he was doing the job of what it would take 3 people to do.”Â [Kilde]

Craig:Â “I basically managed all aspects of his life, from home to business to his performing life. I managed everything. I was the liaison to Axl, anyone who wanted to meet him backstage after the show, including many famous stars, had to go through me. I was in charge of keeping him out of trouble and helping him get ready to do a show.”Â [Kilde]

Axl:Â “I’m really happy with the way things are going. Professional rehearsals in front of people. It allows me to get into the mode I’m gonna have to be in when we start doing the big shows. Frisco and Bill Graham were really cool, and there was a different kind of hunger there for us. L.A. seemed to scrutinize us a bit more, and I welcomed that. In L.A. we didn’t play ‘Jungle’ or ‘Paradise,’ because we’d already played for over two hours. I didn’t want to push my voice any harder. Also, we didn’t want to push past the curfew and be fined eight grand for one song. It felt a little bit like I ripped some people off, but I knew they were happy with what we had done. I thought we went over real well in L.A., but I still look at it as rehearsals. I’m not really worried about what critics have to say about these gigs, but if they like these shows, in six months they’ll be real happy.”

18 -Â AxlÂ tager overraskende nok pÃ¥ offentligt visit pÃ¥ en kendt burgerjoint pÃ¥Â Melrose AvenueÂ iÂ L.A, ved navn “The Burger That Ate L.A.” (Kendt fraÂ Melrose Place), klÃ¦dt i shorts, sort blazerjakke og sine special-syede sko, og sÃ¦tter sig ved et bord udenfor og bestiller en burger, pommes frites og en chokolademilkshake til at skylle det hele ned med. Mens han venter pÃ¥ maden, stirrer forbigÃ¥ende kvinder langt efter ham, og han griner og forklarer intervieweren, at han efterhÃ¥nden er begyndt at nyde at de glor sÃ¥dan efter ham, noget som han ellers tidligere kunne blive gal over. Han forklarer:Â “I know what the problem was. I had an extremely volatile relationship with Erin [Everly, Rose’s ekskone]. And I was projecting strong negative feelings about myself onto other people. I was attracted to people with similar dysfunctional traits, people that I was going to end up not really getting along with. And it wasn’t good for me or them, it just made me despise being with anyone or meeting anyone or having a good thoughts linked to someone.”Â AxlÂ nÃ¦gtede ogsÃ¥ at der var forsinkelser ved udgivelsen af de nye albums: “People want something, and they want it as soon as they can get it. Needy people. And I’m the same way, but I want it to be right – I don’t want it to be half-assed. Since we put out Appetite for Destruction, I’ve watched a lot of bands put out two to four albums. They went out, they did a big tour, they were big rock stars for that period of time. That’s what everybody is used to now – the record companies push that. But I want no part of that. We weren’t just throwing something together to be rock stars. We wanted to put something together that meant everything to us.”Â [Kilde]

Duff:Â “At Alpine Valley Amphitheatre in Wisconsin, my sense of anticipation for the first gig of the tour was overwhelming. Our intro music came on: the theme song from The Godfather. The crowd roared. ‘Here we go.’ My game face came on. I felt we represented something, something primal and animalistic. I felt that fire and anger – I was ready to kick someone in the head. All the background noise of life began to recede. We rushed the stage and I played the first few bass notes for ‘It’s So Easy.’ Total fucking bedlam. Tens of thousands of people absolutely losing their shit. I could see the first few rows of people. I could see how far back the masses of bodies went. Everyone was on their feet and the roar was almost louder than the band”Â [Duff’s biografi, “It’s So Easy”, 2011, s. 183]

“I wanted to be buried here. IÂ bought land hereÂ specifically for that reason (Lake Geneva fra 1988-1998). I mean if you’re from Lafayette, Indiana, you can go to California and know it isn’t your real home. Alpine Valley was where I decided I would go, so I bought a place to be buried here. I don’t think it’s gonna happen that way now. And that’s weird, but it’s cool. I’m going to look at it and see if I want to sell it. There were reasons why I bought that particular piece of land, with those particular trees and that particular smell and that particular vibe, and picked out the land with my stepfather. These reasons don’t exist anymore. And I’m okay with it. I’m kind of excited. I’m wondering where I’m gonna call home. It’s like opening up the world for me.“

Slash:Â “Sometimes you go ‘What the fuck is it for? Then you try to look where to escape to and there’s nowhere to go. We been doing it for so long that we really would all feel sorta lost and lonely if it fell apart and we had to go out and do solo records. Because it wouldn’t be Guns. None of us could reproduce that. Axl’s got so much charisma – he’s one of the best singers around. Itâ€™s his personality. He can go out and do something. What freaks me out is if the band falls apart, I’ll never be able to shake the fact that I’m the ex-Guns n’ Roses guitar player. And that’s almost like selling your soul.”

Axl:Â “I guess I get made because of some form of fear about my own weaknesses. Everybody has theirs, and mine happen to be in what I do. And what I do is sing and run and get my picture taken. I’ve always needed high maintenance to keep my act together. Nothing really comes naturally to me except the desire to sing. I used to jump ship every three days. And I wasn’t crying wolf. It would usually come down to I was leaving but there was no place to go. What am I gonna do, go to Paris, do poetry? Look at art museums and hope that not going after what I set out to do didn’t eat me alive? Go pump gas? I was leaving to pump gas a few times, and ready for it. Then, I don’t know, something in me would go, ‘You can deal with this now’. It just took time to be able to deal with it. And that’s when I would get hassled for not doing photo shoots and interviews, because at that time I needed to be able to deal with just being able to stay here. And that took a lot of time. A lot of my anger came from people not understanding that I needed that time. I would turn myself inside out to certain people, and they still wouldn’t get it. They’re no longer with us, because I just didn’t feel safe, ever.”

17 -Â AxlÂ undskylder til de 18,000 tilskuere at han kommer sent ved showet iÂ Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY, og siger: “Yeah, I know it sucks…If you got any real complaints, you could do me a favor though. You could write a little letter on how much that sucked and send it to Geffen Records….. Tell those people to get the fuck out of my ass.” Han fortÃ¦ller hvordan atÂ GeffenÂ plager bandet om at udgive det nye album (UYI) hurtigst muligt: “The new record will be delayed again. Geffen Records decided they wanted to change the contract and I’m deciding fuck you. And since I don’t have time to do both go back there and argue and bitch with them or be on tour, I guess we’ll just be on tour and have a good time and fuck them. It’s a shame but… So we’ll play a lot of the new shit tonight and it really doesn’t matter does it?“. Han siger ogsÃ¥ at publikum skal stjÃ¦le det sidste nye nummer afÂ Rolling Stone magazine, hvor bandet er pÃ¥ coveret. Under “Patience” sigerÂ AxlÂ til publikum, at de skal tÃ¦ske livet ud af enhver der smider ting pÃ¥ scenen.. Han siger ogsÃ¥ at han ikke vil smide det tilbage igen, han vil bare gÃ¥ sin vej!Â AxlÂ spÃ¸rger publikum hvor mange der har en bootleg af ‘November Rain‘ efter de spillede den. Han fortÃ¦ller ogsÃ¥ at jo flere nye sange de spiller, jo flere bootleg albums vil de sÃ¦lge…SÃ¦tliste:Â Perfect Crime, Mr. Brownstone, Bad Obsession, Dust N’ Bones, Double Talkin’ Jive, Civil War, Nightrain, I Was Only Joking [Intro] / Patience, Live And Let Die, 14 Years, November Rain, Welcome To The Jungle, Drum Solo, Guitar Solo, Godfather Theme, Rocket Queen, Only Women Bleed [Intro] / Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Bad Time [Intro] / Sweet Child O’ Mine, Estranged, Paradise City

Slash:Â “The show that set the pace for what was to ultimately unhinge the tour took place in Uniondale, New York, at the Nassau Coliseum, where we went on late. That night, however, Â AxlÂ apologized to the fans for being late, which, once it became a regular occurrence, he never bothered to do again”Â [Slash’s biografi, s.339]

Axl:Â â€ When I got back onstage, Iâ€™d lost a contact, and I couldnâ€™t see. My first thought was, Iâ€™m out of here. Iâ€™m paying these guysâ€™ [venue staff] salary, I donâ€™t need to be treated like that by them. I went backstage, and found a new lens. It was getting crazy and we decided we were going to go back out and try to play, because we didnâ€™t want people to get hurt. â€Â [RS 22.Aug ’91]

Slash:Â “We were backstage, watching cops on stretchers all bloody and shit, and it was like, “Fuck! How could this be happening?” I was so scared somebody was going to die. It was completely out of hand. This guy was shooting pictures the whole show. He’d been doing it, and probably having a good laugh. I saw Axl tell the security guard, ‘Stop that fuckin’ guy!’ and the security’s watching the band. So Axl went in, and that’s when it started. We wanted to go on again. I know there’s a certain amount of blame that can be put on us, because if you don’t know us, you might say, ‘Well, you could’ve done something to keep it together.’ But from our point of view, it all happened so fast, we didn’t know what the fuck was going on. The kids had a field day. I lost all my amps, my guitar tech got a bottle in the head, someone got knifed, our stage and video equipment and Axl’s piano were trashed. I don’t know. It was a fluke. It shouldn’t have happened… but it did.”

Duff:Â “The band was shoved into a small van and told to get on the floor so we weren’t visible.Â Slash’s hat was sticking up. The driver asked him to take it off. When the van drove our of the enclosed part of the venue and into the parking lot, I could hear the mayhem had spread outside. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I peeked out the back window – I could see speaker cabinets and pieces of our pianos. Kids had gotten tired of carrying them or dumped them when the cops showed. Clots of cops ran around with batons and pepper spray. Kids ran this way and that. Medics rushed around treating bloodied fans. Police had people in cuffs. It looked like a war zone”Â [Duff’s biografu, “It’s So Easy”, 2011, s. 186-188]”

The place allowed bottles and knives and whatever else insideâ€¦ And they [public] think I did it just because I wanted to stop somebody from taking my picture. The camera was the last straw, the final thing. I was sick of it, at that point, with the security in the front. There was a weird space in my mind the entire night. I was thinking, â€œSomething isnâ€™t right up here. Why is there this weird attitude, this passiveness, in the security?â€ There was no feeling that they were on the same team as us. Their feeling towards the crowd wasnâ€™t right. A young boy and a girl were getting shoved over here while rowdy bikers are being allowed to do whatever they want. What is going on? I was very confusedâ€¦ One thing that is not being said in the press is that Earl Gabiddon [Axl’s bodyguard and head of GNR security at the time] was on the headset and he warned these guys [venue staff] in the front that either the cameras go or the show is off. He warned them four times. He was doing his job.Â [Musician, “There’s a Riot Going On,” Sept 1991]

Axl:Â “It’s hard to figure out why we get up onstage to do this, because at some times it’s fun, but other times it takes all the physical fucking energy we’ve got to get up here and do what we do for a living.Â For the last few days, I’m watching CNN and reading this shit in the St. Louis papers about how I incited a riot, and theyâ€™re talking about ‘and in the band, they have a recovering heroin addict, and once, Axl Rose was seen driving down the street in a Jeep yelling obscenities at his former wife’ – what the fuck does that have to do with St. Louis?Â And I had to realize that no matter what we did tonight and how good or bad we played, there’d probably be one person in the press here for that some reason didn’t dig it, and he’d write about something else and write some lies.Â Now, at the same time that won’t have an effect on Dallas, and it shouldn’t affect me, it fucks with the entire thing called rock & roll in general. Because who are the main people that watch these news things and read this shit? They’re all in the forties to fifties, sitting there eating their bran flakes and drinking their coffee.Â I ain’t knocking getting old. It’s a fact of life, unless you die before you get there, you’re gonna get old. But just because you’re old doesn’t mean you have to deny young people their humanity. And so now there’s a lot of people reading these negative things about Guns n’ Roses, and if their kid likes Guns n’ Roses, he’s gonna get smacked in the head or something, because the paper said it was an evil thing.Â And that really makes me go, ‘Fuck what’s the point?’ But I’ll tell you what the point is. We’re up here and what we are doing is something that is dying in America – it usually stays ant an underground level and doesn’t get as successful as Guns n’ Roses – and that’s freedom of expression. And basically, that’s all we fucking are. Guns n’ Roses is just a prime fucking example of freedom of expression….”

Axl: “We did a show with Skid Row in Utah, and there were people sitting there like they were bored off of their asses. Finally, we left. Why should we play the encore? But what we didnâ€™t know was that people had been killed at an AC/DC concert there, and the press and local officials had gone off on the kids so much that by the time they got to the show they were just fed up. Security just kept them from getting into the show at all â€“ and we didnâ€™t know that. We didnâ€™t know what was up. We just wanted to get out of there. MyÂ attitudeÂ was, â€œMan, I only have a few bands that really get me off at a show. What do you want? What do you have to do tonight thatâ€™sÂ betterÂ than this?â€ There were 17 year-old kids there who seemed bored, and I just didnâ€™t understand why. Maybe they wanted to go home and listen to something else.”Â [Hit Parader, 1992]

Duff:Â […] “At the fourth show [of the European leg of the Use Your Illusion tour], in Stockholm, Sweden, [Axl] went to a street festival and watched fireworks before turning up to the gig three hours late”Â [Duff’s biografi, “It’s So Easy”, 2011, s. 190]

Slash:Â […]When we went to Europe with Skid Row, everything went along very well, business as usual, until we got to Mannheim […]. We went on late – late even for us – then, pretty early in the set, something happened andÂ AxlÂ walked off for what reason I have no idea. He wasn’t getting heckled as far as I could see, no one hit him with a bottle or anything, but he wasn’t having it. The stage at that venue was literally about a mile away from the production office and dressing room, so a van was there to shuttle us back and forth. WhenÂ AxlÂ left the stage, he went to the van and headed off to the dressing room.Â The rest of us came offstage and were standing around, waiting to find out ifAxlÂ was coming back or if his van had taken off to the hotel. […]Â I remember standing there withÂ DuffÂ whileÂ MattÂ was fuming. […] “Fuck that guy,” he said. “I’m gonna go straighten him out.”[…]Â By this point we’d discovered thatÂ Axl’s van had not left for the dressing room; he was sitting in it but refused to come out and return to the stage […] SoÂ MattÂ went down toÂ Axl’s van to rally him, but as he got down there, he ran intoÂ Axl, who had emerged to head back to the stage.Â mattÂ was so fired up, though, that he got inÂ Axl’s face regardless, to the degree that it almost got physical.
“What the fuck are you doing?”Â MattÂ yelled. “Get back onstage!”
I ran up and got between them, because it wasn’t a good situation.Â AxlÂ can get completely psycho when he decides to fight andÂ MattÂ weighs twice as much as I do – and he plays the drums – so it wasn’t exactly a good place for me to be.Â AxlÂ went back to his van, and it didn’t look like he was coming out again.The clock was ticking.Â The promoters saw the drama that was going on and closed the gates around the venue so that we couldn’t leave. They’d heard what had happened in St. Louis, and it’s a good thing they did; if they hadn’t, I’m positive that the thirty-eight thousand fans there would have rioted, we would have been held liable and arrested, and people might have died. The local police were already there in riot gear, ready to deal with a full-on situation. It was a scary, tense scene, and a very near miss.Â We gotÂ AxlÂ back onstage once he realized he had no choice, and the rest of the show went as planned. All I could remember thinking as I walked offstage after the encore was Fuck that was close”Â [Slash’s biografi, s. 343-344]

Duff:Â “WhenÂ AxlÂ left the stage in Mannheim, Germany, another riot looked inevitable. We had gone on late again. The venue was huge, an outdoor stadium packed with twice as many people as even the biggest of the basketball arenas we had played in the United States up to this point.Â MattÂ Sorum tried a novel approach whenÂ AxlÂ left; maybe to a “new” guy it was the obvious thing to do. He went to findÂ AxlÂ and confront him. He was turned away byÂ Axl’s security detail. The promoters – not the band members, not the managers, not the entourage – saved the day. Their threat was thatÂ Axlwould be arrested if a riot occurred might not have worked on its own. But they also locked us into the venue”Â [Duff’s biografi, “It’s So Easy”, 2011, s. 194]

Duff:Â “IzzyÂ didn’t walk away and force the cancellation of the Wembley show. He stayed and played one last gig to draw the curtains on this leg of the tour – the last show before the release of the albums we were ostensibly touring.Â AxlÂ arrived on time. We played spectacularly well, as fierce and inspired and together as ever before. If not for the additional people and gear onstage, it could have been mistaken for one of our club shows”Â [Duff’s biografi, “It’s So Easy”, 2011, s. 194]

Slash: “Izzy’s final show was before seventy-two thousand people at Wembley Stadium, in London, a venue we sold out faster than any artist in history. But it’s more worth mentioning that as far as I remember, afterÂ IzzyÂ informed us that he was leaving, not one of the remaining European shows started late”Â [Slash’s biografi, “Slash”, 2007, s. 344-345]

September

Izzy:Â “I don’t know if the drugs were the reason. When I left the band, I was completely clean for two and a half years, from 1989 on. And when I was myself again, I really didn’t know what happened, because I wasn’t there any longer. I was seeing how my friends were dying, and after some time of that I decided that I’d had enough. I didn’t want to continue being a part of that. Now we’re all clean, and that’s great.” Â [Kilde]

Izzy: After the first leg of the UYI tour, Axl wanted to make me sign aÂ contract which meant that I was less involved and less paid. I couldn’tÂ believe it. This contract was coming from someone I grew up with for fuck’sÂ sake. We always considered GNR as a best friend band, and now Axl wasÂ telling me:” now we are doing business.” Why should I carry on? Where wasÂ the fun? That was the last drop. But other things happen before like inÂ Donnington where to kids died during the show. What the fuck is that? IsÂ that rock n’ roll? To read in an airport newspaper that kid died duringÂ one of your gig? What the fun to play in stadium every night and to startÂ a riot in Saint-Louis because your singer is fucked up? You come to a pointÂ when none of all this is funny anymore. Axl wasn’t doing his front man jobÂ anymore. As for the others, there were all stoned and wasted, I wasn’tÂ even able to make them learn covers: We could have play covers while AxlÂ was away waiting for him to come back, entertaining the kids. No. We cameÂ up with drum solo. What’s more boring than a drum solo???Â [Fra Hard Rock Magazine, juni 2001]

Axl:Â “Izzy and I have been together 15 years so it’s kind of a shock to my system. Stradlin and the band were going in separate directions, and he’s not really into touring or video or anything like that.”Â [Kilde]

Gilby:Â “yes, a lil… i was hungover. i met up with some friends the night before & had a yager party. it took the edge off”Â [A4D Interview, August 2011]

Slash:Â “Once Gilby was in and we were back on tour, we added Soundgarden to the bill for the next leg, which began in December 1991 in Worcester, Massachusetts. They were a favourite band of ours and it was cool to have them, but we didnâ€™t have a good rapport with them at all. We had no common vibe with any of the grunge bands, actually, because we were such a big name; we were the Led Zeppelin of the time, so coming from their more underground, indie point of view, they thought of us as â€œfat, lazy, and self-indulgent.â€ Weâ€™d take them on tour and they wouldnâ€™t talk to us. It was hypocritical because they didnâ€™t really want to be there, but then again, unless Iâ€™m mistaken, they didnâ€™t say no to the gig. All things considered, Duff and I got along with Chris Cornell and Kim Thayill really well, and I understood their wanting to steer clear of the circus all around them.”

Slash:Â “I don’t have a minute of the day where I’m not thinking about what the band is doing. Except, you know, sex is different. . . . But otherwise, I’m 100 percent involved – you try to keep up so decisions aren’t made that are gonna burn you later on. You don’t want anything negative to happen to you. A little bit of consciousness about what’s going on helps your overall performance.”Â [Kilde]